


Catharsis

by digimaniac33



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Rare Pairing, [S] Game Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3596943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digimaniac33/pseuds/digimaniac33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade wakes up with a killer headache, no idea how she got it, and a certain troll trying to get her attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ForestFiresong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestFiresong/gifts).



Jade sat up, a monstrous headache immediately making her regret that action. The pain made it difficult for her to remember anything she'd been doing recently, including how she could have gotten such a headache in the first place. She looked around and realized she was on her bed, in the middle of her island. _How did I get all the way out here?_ Bec might have been playing a trick on her, but the dog was nowhere to be seen, and he usually liked to hover around her when he wanted to play.

Her lunchtop computer, which was lying on the bed next to her, suddenly gave off a shrill chime, piercing directly through Jade's brain and magnifying her headache twofold. She winced, but she still answered it, hoping it was one of her friends who would explain just what was going on. Those hopes were dashed when she saw just who was pestering, or rather _trolling_ her. 

cuttlefishCuller [CC] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG]

CC: Glub glub. 38)  
GG: what!!!!!  
CC: S-E-E??  
GG: see what!  
GG: go away  
CC: I told you!  
CC: T)(ere is not)(ing to worry about at all.  
GG: bluhhh what are you talking about....  
GG: my head hurts  
GG: just stop it, stop trolling me  
GG: i hate you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
CC: )(oly mackerel, looks like SOM-EON-E woke up on t)(e wrong side of t)(e absurd )(uman bed!  
CC: C)(ill out, Jade. I am just following up on w)(at I told you earlier.  
GG: about what!  
GG: i dont remember talking to you at all  
GG: or  
GG: wait  
GG: have we talked before?   
GG: ugh my head hurts so much  
CC: WOW, you figured it out R----E----ELLY fast t)(is time! 38D   
GG: figured what out??   
GG: i dont understand whats happening at all!!!   
CC: I t)(ink it will be a lot easier if I just explain it in P-ERSON, don't you? 

Jade stared at her computer screen. "Explain _what_ in person?"

"What's happened to you, stupid!" Jade nearly fell off her bed, while her lunchtop wasn't as lucky. Her shock was understandable, as someone had materialized onto her bed out of thin air.

Jade's tired and battered mind made a few connections and supplied her with the word _troll_ , and then a name. "You... you're, um, Feferi, right?"

The troll grinned, wide and offhandedly dangerous. "Yes!!! Oh, I knew showing up in person would kelp speed things along!" Feferi scooted closer to Jade, while Jade tamped down on her instinctive desire to back away. "So, do you remember anything else yet?"

"Um..." Jade wracked her brain for answers. "I don't think so? I don't even really know how I know you, though. Everything's all... mixed up."

"Hm..." Feferi flopped back, resting against the headboard of Jade's bed. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, I haven't been paying very much attention to what's been happening with you guys, so I don't think I can help you remember what happened to you."

"Great." Jade sighed and looked around at her island again. Everything seemed the same as always - the forests following the steep curves of the mountains, the ocean pushing up against the shore below - and off in the distance, she could see her home, the tower where she'd grown up. Her room was missing, though. Jade stared at the tower, a feeling in the back of her mind telling her something else was off about it. "My house..." She trailed off, the almost-memory fading away as she tried to articulate it.

Feferi turned to look behind herself and exclaimed, "That's right! This memory is from a long time ago, isn't it? So your house shouldn't look like that anymore!"

Jade frowned. "Memory? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oops." Feferi giggled, turning back towards Jade. "I am supposed to be letting you figure that out for yourself! Well, whatebber. What's done is done, right?" Feferi stood up and gestured all around her. "Everything you are seeing is based off a memory - one of your memories, of coralse. I never visited your session, after all, so it couldn't be my memory, and I do not think there is anyone else around." She jumped onto the bed again, leaning towards Jade like one of those girls at a sleepover from the movies Jade had watched as a kid. "I am surprised I beat Aradia here, actually! She always likes to greet newcomers first hershellf."

Jade tried to make sense of all that Feferi had said, or at least understand enough to ask more questions, but the fog and pain in her head refused to cooperate. Instead, she focused on just the memory aspect. She looked around again, and realized the terrain was all wrong, even though it looked exactly the same as it always had. "There... there should be snow here, right?" As she spoke, snow began drifting in piles around her bed. In seconds, the entire landscape was covered.

"Wow!" Feferi stared up in appreciation at the drifting flakes. "It is _reelly_ beautiful! I never realized how amazing landbound weather could be. None of our lands had much weather at all, except Kanaya's, and that did not really count, you know."

Jade looked up and smiled a little. The falling snow was so peaceful, she couldn't hold onto the anger she'd been feeling. "Yeah, it never snowed on my island before we entered the game, so I never realized how pretty it looked in person."

"It is incredible!" Feferi jumped off the bed again and started running through the snow, holding her hands wide to catch the flakes as they fell. Jade remained seated, surprised by the troll's quick movement, until Feferi turned to her and made some kind of weird gesture with her fins and arms. "Come on, Jade, get off your bass and come out here!"

Jade grinned and joined Feferi in the snow fields, trying to kick up as much snow as possible on her way to the troll. They played in the deepening drifts and time seemed to stop. Jade showed Feferi how to pack the snow into balls and they had what felt like Jade's first proper snowball fight. It ended as quickly as it had begun when Feferi started just dumping huge piles of snow on Jade's head, and soon both girls were just staring up at the falling snow and running in circles until they got dizzy and flopped into convenient snow piles.

Staring up at the sky through her snow-flecked glasses, Jade felt light, unburdened by whatever had been troubling her before. Her headache was gone, her anger had dissipated, and she was completely content. "I wish I could stay like this forever."

"Well, if that is what you reelly wanted, you could."

Jade sat up and frowned at the troll beside her. "Wait, what do you mean by that?"

Feferi sat up as well, still smiling. "Exactly what I said! You could play in the snow forebber if that is what you wanted to do!"

Jade's brow scrunched in confusion. "I don't see how that's possible. There's all sorts of things I have to do for my friends, and the game, and - "

Feferi sighed in exasperation. "You mean you _still_ don't remember what has happened? Seash, I thought you were a lot smarter than this, Jade."

"Hey!" Jade stood up, her good mood gone in a flash. "You don't get to insult me just because you helped set this place up, Feferi!" Jade's hands curled into fists and her ears began to twitch. In the depths of her throat, a low growl began to rumble.

Feferi didn't seem intimidated or scared by Jade's sudden aggression, though. In fact, she seemed almost happy about it. That dissonance confused Jade, who was suddenly eager for a fight that didn't seem to be happening, and so it took Jade a few seconds to realize what she'd just said, and to notice how her body had changed. She carefully unclenched her fists, noticing how her nails had grown sharp and hard. Slowly, she brought her hands up to the top of her head, where she felt a pair of dog's ears. Her own light caress tickled a little, causing her to let out a short yap in surprise. "I've got dog ears!" Jade exclaimed, unable to do anything but state the obvious.

Feferi laughed. "Good, you are remembering moray! What do you remember now?"

Jade sat in the snow again, trying to reach her memories. They stayed just out of her reach, though, and her headache began to build again. She sighed and flopped backwards. "I dunno, it's still all jumbled up."

"Don't try so hard, just let it all flow back. How did you know I set up this place? Why does your body look like that?" Feferi's melodic voice calmed Jade down, as she focused on breathing and letting the memories come to her. She closed her eyes, and tried to feel what she should know.

Soon after closing her eyes, she realized the snow was wrong. It had been there once, but it shouldn't be there anymore. As she thought about it, the snow melted away under her. She sat up, peeked one eye open, and recognized the Land of Frost and Frogs, her SBURB world. "That's right! We were playing the game and..." Jade fingered the dog ears on top of her head. "We escaped through the Scratch."

"Yes!!!" Feferi exclaimed. "Now you are getting it!"

Jade looked down at her clothes and frowned. "Wait, I'm a god tier, right? I mean, I know I didn't have these before," she said as she gestured at her clothes and her ears. "So if I'm god tier, I'm just asleep, right?"

Feferi frowned right back. "How shoald I know? I told you, I haven't been paying attention to what you humans have been up to."

"Well, what _have_ you been doing, then?" Jade asked, exasperated by the troll's attitude.

Feferi shrugged. "I dunno! Mostly swimming around the dreambubbles with Nepeta, after our spriteself exploded."

"Your spriteself?" Unbidden memories started to rise in Jade's mind, but she forced them back down, focusing on Feferi's story.

"Yeah!!" Feferi started gesturing wildly as she explained. "Nepeta and I were joined into one sprite for Roxy. We were with her fur months, and we stayed up all night talking aboat boys and gills, and we went on all sorts of advenpurrs with her!" Feferi dropped her arms to her side, her customary energy suddenly dimmed. "Then, um... something harpooned, and we weren't a sprite anymore."

"Oh. That... sounds like it sucks. I'm sorry." Jade ignored the bright green memories in the back of her mind, ignored how the landscape began to shift into black-and-white checkerboard at the edges of her sight. Instead, she asked, "Who's Roxy?"

Feferi smiled wide again, and said, "Roxy is one of your human players! She is really sweet and cares about all her friends, even though she is not very good at fixing their problems." Feferi's smile dropped a little. "That was something Nepeta and I had in common with her."

Jade nodded absentmindedly, her thoughts drifting somewhere else. "Roxy... she looked kinda like Rose, right?"

Feferi looked taken aback. "Yes! How did you minnow that? Did you meet her?"

"I..." Jade's headache was building in force. "I did, but I don't..." Purple walls started to form around her and Feferi, but Jade closed her eyes tight, trying to keep away from those memories. She didn't like the feelings that were piggybacking on them, feelings of anger and loss and a vicious joy that absolutely terrified her.

"Jade?" Feferi's voice kept some part of Jade anchored outside of her head, but she didn't open her eyes. Too much of her was afraid of what she would see, and what she would remember. A soft pressure on her knee shocked her back out of her mind, though. As she scrambled backwards, she opened her eyes and saw Feferi with one hand reaching out towards her. "Jade," she said, leaving her hand in the air. "I promise, everything will be okay if you let yourshellf remember."

Jade bit her lip and tried to focus on her breathing again. She couldn't remember when, but at some point she'd started hyperventilating. She kept her eyes on Feferi, and slowly nodded, trusting Feferi's words. She tried to let herself fall into the memories she was holding away, but she couldn't relax until Feferi carefully picked up her hand and squeezed it gently. With that physical connection there to ground her, Jade took one last breath and let the memories surround her.

The purple buildings of Derse started forming behind Jade and Feferi, as the Land of Frost and Frogs shifted somewhat. Jade's childhood home now towered overhead, with a lake of lava at its feet. "We were fighting someone," Jade said out loud, trying to work her way through the memories from the beginning. "Only it wasn't Lord English or Jack Noir or any of the Underlings, it was..."

A bright bubble of light flashed on overhead, and Jade's face screwed up in sorrow. "It was Grandpa, we were fighting Grandpa, only he was a boy just like me. And this weird blue troll made him go all supernova, so I had to get him away from Derse because..." Jade trailed off again, her memory starting to fail her again.

Feferi squeezed her hand lightly, trying to bring her back on track. "Why were you on Derse in the first place, Jade? Water you doing there?"

Jade squeezed back, grateful for the lead. "That was where... where the Condesce was staying. She was controlling me somehow, or..." Jade frowned, shook her head. "No, she wasn't controlling me, not really. I was just following her orders because... because..." She growled in frustration. "Ugh, why can't I remember?! There must have been some reason I was doing what she told me to do!"

"That kinda sounds like she was controlling you to me, Jade!" Feferi piped up. "But how aboat you leave that memory alone and go back to the fight you were in?"

"Yeah, okay." Jade took a deep breath and brought her mind back to her memories of fighting Jake. "I had to get him away from Derse, but... whatever the blue troll did to him, I couldn't teleport him away for some reason. So I teleported Derse away, instead, and I brought us all to my land instead." The Derse buildings behind them faded away again, leaving just the battle-scarred Land of Frost and Frogs around the pair. "I tried to overpower him, to show him I was just as strong as he was, but..." Jade fell silent.

Feferi waited a few moments, then said, "But... what? What happened?"

Jade sighed. "I wasn't. I wasn't strong enough to beat him, and he completely blew me away." Green and red flames started burning the forest near her home, and a large furrow appeared in the ground from the lava lake to where Jade and Feferi were sitting. "I don't know what happened after that."

Feferi smiled. "Well, it sounds like you are just knocked out to me!" She jumped up on her feet, pulling Jade up along with her. "We shoald go and explore the dreambubbles before you wake up. It will be boatloads of fun!" She began to march off in a random direction.

Jade stumbled along after Feferi for a few steps, but something was still troubling her. She stopped in her tracks as she tried to figure out what was bothering her, dropping Feferi's hand. When Feferi turned around with a questioning look, Jade said, "I don't think I'm just sleeping, Feferi."

Feferi puffed her cheeks out in annoyance. "You said you could not remember anything moray, though!"

"I know," Jade said, "but... but it still doesn't seem right." Jade thought through the last moments she could remember again - Jake going into some weird power-up ritual, moving everyone to her SBURB land, trying to overpower Jake with the power of the Green Sun, skipping across the lava, and then... she remembered just a little more. Not her mind - she had definitely been unconscious - but her body was still feeling some phantom sensation. It felt as though the whole world was pressing down on her, and the headache she'd been fighting off wasn't just in her head anymore, it spread through her entire body. Every part of her felt like it was being _crushed_ into the ground.

Jade looked up at her home again, and saw it tumbling down. Her eyes widened as she finally understood what had happened. "They dropped a house on me, Feferi. I'm... I'm dead." Jade sank to her knees. She babbled in an increasingly loud voice, "Oh god, I'm dead, one of them killed me, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm _DEAD_." That last word was a howl, one that broke open the gates holding back Jade's tears. She fell forward onto her hands and screamed into the ground, nonsense words that barely began to scratch the emptiness filling her inside.

Jade howled out her sadness for who knew how long. Time in the dreambubbles always seemed endless. Eventually, though, her wailing subsided, and she realized she wasn't crouching on the ground anymore. Instead, she was bundled up in someone's arms, her tears and snot staining their shirt.

It was Feferi, of course. At some point during Jade's fit, she'd scooped her up into her arms and held her close. Now that she seemed to be calming down, Feferi pulled back a little and gave her a small smile, not the sharktoothed one she normally sported. "Feel better?" she asked.

Now that she was back in her right state of mind, Jade felt the need to pull away, such easy intimacy still scaring her after so much time spent alone. Feferi's embrace was comforting, though, and so Jade stayed where she was and nodded slightly. She did have to ask, "How did you know hugging would help?" From what she'd managed to figure out, trolls were usually much less comfortable with physical gestures like hugging than humans were.

"Roxy always asked me and Nepeta to give her a hug whenever she was having a rough time," Feferi answered. "It was a little weird at first, but I understand why you humans like doing it so much." The tips of Feferi's fins flared fuchsia. "Although it is a little whaler than I would like."

"Whaler?" Jade tried to figure out what Feferi's word had been before adding the pun in. She got it after remembering a painfully awkward conversation with Karkat. "Oh, paler! Okay." The implications of that finally worked their way through Jade's mind, and it was her turn to blush. "Oh. Paler. Right. Um."

"I minnow it is a little out of the blue," Feferi said, "but I think you are very pretty, Jade, especially for an alien."

Jade had to laugh at that. "I think I could say the same right back at you!" Feferi smiled, wide and almost dangerous again. Jade's heart thumped a little louder, but too much of her was still hurting to say anything more just yet. Instead, she stood, pulling Feferi up with her. "You mentioned exploring the dreambubbles earlier?"

"Yes!" Feferi grabbed Jade's hand with both of her own. "That big green creep has been crashing around all over the place, but there are still plenty of bubbles we could swim through."

Jade smiled widely back, displaying her canine teeth. "Well then, let's go!"


End file.
